Life at War, Battling Plants

This one comes from Afghanistan via a Reuters article on CNN's offbeat-news ...
"... One soldier told him later: "Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd say 'That damn marijuana'.""

Obviously Canadian troops have their troubles combatting "almost impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall":
"We tried burning them with white phosphorous -- it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel -- it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," complains General Rick Hillier.
The problem seems to be the weed-forests are hard to penetrate with thermal detectors, so that it's easy for Taliban fighters to appear and disappear in and out again.

A truly evil herb, evil, evil, evil.
But we would have thought the Canadians were much better prepared for confronting the plant's terrorist powers than that -
When on one rare occasion one of the cannabis-forests caught on fire "a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hiller said dryly."

Our eyes certainly don't stay dry imagining the troopers experiencing those "ill effects" ...

P.S. An afterthought - maybe the fire-resistance of the plant could be used to prevent Southern California from those wild-fires.
Imagine belts of hemp forests placed strategically in the affected areas saving lives and property. Possible ill effects could be countered with medical marijuana.